Ok…firstly. Bong. Secondly….Bong. Maybe the best word ever ? Why are they called Bongs ? I don’t know but naming yourself Bong, and your album “Stoner Rock” is an audacious piece of stall setting out-ness. If they were really being audacious the album would be a bunch of chirpy Italo-disco dance hits, that would really be defeating expectations but actually the album is exactly what you would expect…but much , much longer. I actually forgot about the second track because the first track was so very long (and drone-y) that I assumed I had heard it. “Out Of The Aeons” is 35 minutes long and revolves around a single distorted chord (accompanied by a muted background guitar frolic), drums that are paced at around the rate of growth for the average lichen and the pay off of a wizard sounding man telling a story about cliff and Yogoth. It’s not so much a song as an experience…like being painlessly dissolved in a bath of warm sludge. It represents the epitome of stoner / sludge / drone rock which is exactly what the band wanted but this kind of mammoth expedition into the middle of nowhere, while being brave, is so featureless that my mind wandered off frequently and I had to chastise it for not thinking of the job in hand.
So….what is your reward for slowing your metabolism to virtually nothing and shutting of most of the electrical impulses in your brain down in order to accomodate the endless spaces of this album ? It’s another 35 minutes of epic stoner rock (“Polaris”), which revolves round a single distorted chord and very, very slow drumming. Oh…and a wizard sounding man does another monologue. The most notable feature of “Polaris” is that it starts ending around fifteen minutes before it actually finishes, with a series of false stops that go nowhere. Slowly. Even when it’s actually stopped, the track keeps going with silence for around two minutes. It’s pretty clear to me that the best and only way to enjoy this album is to avail yourself of a large bong beforehand, allowing the internal brainmelt to harmonise with the external brainmelt and giving the minutae of this album the focus they need to become epic.
Kim Monaghan
